A little while ago, I posted a blog entry that dealt with reasons why small businesses really should consider using Linux. I listed the freedom from vendor lock-in as one very important consideration and specifically stated that vendor lock-in here refers to data formats, not even specifically to Linux. Surprisingly (or not?), I got a very strange and negative reaction from some of my readers, which seem to be more in tune with Microsoft's solutions. So, I would like to talk about their reasoning here and my take on it.